Edmonton Architectural Tour | Highlands

Morning! I’ve been working through a fun new mini series and I can’t wait to share it with you guys.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a hard time sitting still. In fact, one of the things I’ve been struggling the most with over mat-leave is running at a slower pace. I’ve been trying to think positively about it though; it’s an opportunity to get curious and explore things I otherwise wouldn’t have had time to. Which brings me to this series.

Early into my leave, I came across a Daily Hive post about the coziest Edmonton neighborhoods to explore in the fall. If you’re familiar with Edmonton, it’s not exactly a hot tourist destination so I just loved how well the post highlighted some of the city’s hidden gems. Normally, I would have read through that post and immediately moved on, but since I had nothing but time and 2 month old who was pretty happy in his stroller, I was inspired to create my own version of that post highlighting some of more unique neighborhoods in terms of architecture.

I’ll be honest, after the initial excitement of the idea wore off, I was a bit worried that this was more of a make work project as Edmonton isn’t exactly known for it’s architecture. I wasn’t even confident I would find enough eye-catching homes to create a blog post let alone a mini series. As it turns out, Edmonton does have a lot of interesting homes, you just have to know where to look.

Highlands

So I started my tour in Highlands, a small community in the north east part of the city that overlooks the river valley. In 2012, it was actually ranked one of Canada’s top ten neighborhoods of old homes by This Old House and I’m happy to say, this one did not disappoint.

If I could sum up the area in one word, I would say ‘charm’. The majority of the residents living here have done a beautiful job of maintaining their homes, some of which are over 100 years old. I also noticed that there are very few infills in the area, so the community is really unique in that it’s truly historic. I think it’s also worth noting that the homes here are sized appropriately for their lots, with each one sitting far enough back from the road to allow for a full front yard, the majority of which were also very well maintained. With front yards being something we’ve evolved away from in newer communities, seeing them here really created a feeling of luxury despite many of the homes being on the smaller side. To top it off, the timing of the tour was absolutely perfect as the leaves on the large trees lining the street had just started to change colour, which only added to the quaint feel of the community.

And of course, I finished my tour with a stop at Kind Ice Cream ;)

This community was hands-down my favorite, I hope you enjoy!